As the Internet is being overrun with video traffic, many wonder if it can survive. With challenges being thrown down over the imbalances that have been created and their impact on the viability of monopolistic business models, the Internet is under constant scrutiny. Will it survive? Or will it succumb to the burden of the billion plus community that is constantly demanding more and more?
Just finished listening to this really interesting panel discussion made available over at IT Conversations, on the subject of whether the net needs an upgrade based on the changing and ever increasing usage patterns and demand from an ever increasing base of users. The panel is comprised of Van Jacobson, Rick Hutley, Norman Lewis and David S. Isenberg.
We have seen the rise in demand for video online, increases in peer to peer data, and whole virtual world syndrome. The way we are using the internet today is radically different from what it was originally conceived as. The internet as such is evolving and as been from the moment it emerged and perhaps part of the problem is that it is evolving so quickly, it represents a myriad of innovations but has also created a number of complications. If you consider that when the net was first and conceived and used it was a closed system at any point in time every point in the system was a trusted point, we can contrast this with what we have today where the open nature of the internet has abrogated this principle. Yet the very openness of the internet is what has driven it’s massive growth, we have seen entire industries emerge during this growth, entire businesses formed around the pervasiveness of this infrastructure.
It was interesting listening to the panel most of whom agreed that some kind of upgrade was needed, yet for me the point Van made seems profound, even though I don’t fully grasp it : he argued that it isn’t the net that needs upgrading its our point of view that needs to change. Instead of looking at the network we need to look at the content because thats what we are now using the internet for, we need to think in terms of that content moving around, whats the best way to move it around and secure it based on what it is.
I think I need reflect a little longer on this discussion and better understand the arguments presented by the various panelists, it’s difficult to switch from being a consumer or in essence a user of services or abstractions built upon this vast infrastructure to actually trying to start to think about the net as a physical infrastructure … but it’s given me great food for thought.